Rota was a pianist, conductor, noted academic, and one of the most important composers in Film History. That would not happen for another four years when I saw Satyricon(1969) at a revival house in Boston… while on acid! At that point I had yet to see a Federico Fellini film. This version of the Shakespeare play was my first encounter with the music of Nino Rota, and the beginning of my love for all things Italian. At the time, I was studying improvisational piano with an amazing, inspiring teacher who coached me through working on playing the theme from Romeo And Juliet, which brought me much happiness. I also totally fell in love with the score for this film. Most assuredly, the memory of the sight of the naked backside of Leonard Whiting meant lots of crumpled tissues under my bed when I was a teenager. In all he produced four symphonies, twelve operas, five ballets, three piano concertos, three cello concertos, various choral works, and dozens of chamber works-the best known being his Concerto for Strings.Nino Rota and Federico Fellini via YouTubeĪt 14-years-old and feeling highly romantic, I couldn’t have been more captivated by the Franco Zeffirelli film version of William Shakespeare’s Romeo And Juliet (1968).
Less well known is the fact that Rota was a prolific composer of chamber music, operas, and orchestral pieces. For example, the score for The Godfather was nominated for an Oscar, won a British Academy Film Award, a Golden Globe Award, and a Grammy. The theme song for La Strada sold more than two million copies in Italy alone. The soundtrack album of Romeo and Juliet, with combined dialogue and music, reached number two and spent 74 weeks on the Billboard charts.
Rota's film scores were a great commercial success. For Fellini alone, Rota produced almost 80 film scores starting with The White Sheik in 1952 and ending with the unfairly forgotten Orchestra Rehearsal in 1979, the year of the composer's death. He also wrote the scores for Franco Zeffirelli's Romeo and Juliet (1968), Luchino Visconti's The Leopard, and Francis Ford Coppola's The Godfather (1972) and The Godfather Part II. Nino Rota is best known for his many film scores-in particular for the seminal Fellini films La Strada (1954), La Dolce Vita (1960), 8 1/2 (1963), Juliet of the Spirits (1965), and Amarcord (1974). Indeed, there are new performances and recordings of Rota's music being made to this day. He was a prolific composer there are a great many recordings of all of his music-both popular and classical and it would be impossible to list all of them. Below is a selected discography for Nino Rota (1911–1979).
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